


A Monastery Hides More Than Bones

by MissingTriforce



Series: A Kinder Universe [1]
Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Asexuality, Awkward Flirting, Blood and Gore, Falling In Love, Fangplay, First Kiss, First Meetings, Happy Ending, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissingTriforce/pseuds/MissingTriforce
Summary: While Beckett still felt the stray regret for his unlife, gladness flooded him now. He did not blush, though instinct told him this was an appropriate moment. He’d met many beautiful Kindred—besides the Nosferatu, many, many Kindred were beautiful in his experience. But to be so near Anatole, to have that deep, mesmerizing gaze on you…. It was like those surgeons who sliced open eyes and removed cataracts.
Relationships: Beckett (Vampire: the Masquerade)/Anatole (Vampire: the Masquerade)
Series: A Kinder Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645372
Comments: 24
Kudos: 22





	1. Ethos

Night unfurled across the Court of Love, and the Kindred came out. Beckett grumbled.

“Your cuffs are adequate, young one. Stop teasing the lace,” Aristotle said. The low nasal hum of his sire’s voice mollified him somewhat. He gave one last indignant tug and let his clothes be.

Before his first death, Beckett had never been to Versailles, let alone walked the royal grounds. Now the lush gardens and precision hedgerows grew in almost familiar places. He could not walk it blinded, like Aristotle could. His footfalls scuffed the marble steps down the terrace while his sire glided without a sound. A breeze blew past his nose and their dark cloaks fluttered behind them. Beckett took a deep breath. The enhanced senses had been the first thing to which he’d become accustomed, in this unlife. All that information from the wind—the fruit scent of lady’s perfume, the musk of men’s cologne, and the pure smell of roses. Kindred gathered to the northwest of them.

Their footsteps pressed across the dry lawn, and they approached a hedge maze. At the pulsing center would be the blood-addicts, of course. They were dramatic like that.

Aristotle said, “I know you would rather be home and reading our books, but tonight’s Court will interest you. We are to meet Lady Lucita de Aragon and Anatole.”

“Our fellow ‘memory-seekers,’” Beckett said, trailing behind and noting the fading animal and insect noises. “Nothing would please me more. No, wait. I can think of one thing.” He paused for effect and to glance at Aristotle. The man already had a smile sneaking onto his face. “The next paragraph of that awe-inspiring history of the Salubri.”

The usual serious mien of Aristotle’s face cracked in mischief. “I assure you the book will be there when we return, young one.”

Beckett rolled his eyes. Another breath and the roses’ scent rushed closer. Four turns more, and he entered a garden of blooms and pale statues gleaming under the full moon.

Beckett shook his head to clear it. No, they weren’t statues. They were Kindred to him: the dead. They clustered in close little knots of coterie and uneasy alliance, any rotting smell covered by the overwhelming scent of flowers. The petals were painted darker the further one delved into the garden. The ones at the edge were white as the purest lamb’s wool; the ones at the middle the velvet red of iron-rich blood.

At the center of the garden in the center of the maze was an elaborate twisting gazebo of iron and wood. And without fail, his long red-brown hair artfully tousled and scandalously down, Prince Villon sat on his cushioned throne under that gazebo. Ghouls were positioned on either side to fan him, as if a Kindred could feel heat-sickness at the dead of midnight. Beckett scowled and adjusted his glasses. He did not want the Prince to notice him or have any more comments on the “unique eyes of the Gangrel.”

Thankfully, Aristotle chose to stand far from the gazebo, still only paces away from the entrance. Presumably to ensure these colleagues would spot his face as they entered. Beckett stood a little behind him, next to a bush of white roses. The moon coaxed an almost glowing visage upon them, and such excess of nature settled the Beast. Aristotle labeled Kindred as urban creatures, but Beckett did not find the descriptions accurate.

The Herald of the Court—some toady man Beckett had not bothered yet to remember the name of—cleared his throat, and all eyes instantly took note. The toad stepped in front of the throne. “My Prince, we have guests who wish to pay homage and beg hospitality of you.”

Prince Villon smirked. His leg gave an odd twitch, which might be construed as arranging that his calf was more visible and at its best angle. The satin stocking did look very nice, and Beckett was impressed by the sheer French-ness of the gesture. “What are they named, Herald?”

“A Lady Lucita de Aragon of the Clan Lasombra and Master Anatole of Clan Malkavian.”

“Show them in.”

The Herald hopped to it. He passed Aristotle and went into the hedges to emerge moments later with two Kindred. The woman’s dark coloring and black hair spoke of a Spanish origin, and he received the impression that her dress was in the latest Spanish noble style. While she appeared rather muscular, the man beside her was thin as a collection of sticks with a wild, deep yellow thatch of hair on his head. He wore the black robes of a Benedictine monk—a rarity in Beckett’s Anglican homeland, a sight slightly more common in Catholic France, and absolutely extinct in his unlife until this very moment. Yet this Anatole did not have the title “Brother” before his name. An impersonator?

Lucita and Anatole bowed. “Great Prince, we seek hospitality.” Lucita’s Spanish accent rose determined and clear in the night air. “We crave time with the scholar Aristotle de Laurent.”

The Prince made a show of consideration, stroking his chin. Beckett’s Beast paced in the cage of his ribs. He’d wanted to leave the moment they passed through the palace gate. Now he wanted to leave and quiz this faux-monk.

As if Anatole had heard his thought, the blonde head turned. Deep blue eyes pierced him true, and Beckett couldn’t stop the gasp. A phantom beat of the heart. He stepped backward and deeper in Aristotle’s shadow. Something…this Anatole knew something.

Time blurred. Anatole’s gaze did not find him again, but Beckett turned the memory of the look over and over in his mind, trying to find sense. One could always find logic. He supposed the Prince said something flirtatious, and Lucita demurred.

Beckett turned away, faking like the bright white roses held his attention. He hunched his shoulders so more of his cloak covered him. Perhaps what he was doing was foolish, but it had always worked to get the other Oxford professors to ignore him. He sensed rather than heard the Court breaking for social chatting.

The roses looked the same as the silk of the Prince’s stockings. Beckett touched them with a light finger at the same moment a light finger pressed into his cheek and traced his jaw. A voice breathed like a prayer. “Dr. Matthew Lowell.”

Beckett had been laboring under the impression that everyone who knew that name was dead. He turned sharp on his heel with a sharper word. “I go by Cuthbert Beckett now.”

While Beckett still felt the stray regret for his unlife, gladness flooded him now. He did not blush, though instinct told him this was an appropriate moment. He’d met many beautiful Kindred—besides the Nosferatu, many, many Kindred were beautiful in his experience. But to be so near Anatole, to have that deep, mesmerizing gaze on you…. It was like those surgeons who sliced open eyes and removed cataracts.

“Oh.” Anatole’s face was long and angular, cheekbones delicate and perfect. Emotions flashed on it faster than Beckett could follow. “Forgive me.”

Beckett straightened. “It’s all right. Aristotle said you were Malkavian, and it’s been my understanding that you cannot control your knowledge. Is it that way for you?” Where was Aristotle? Beckett glanced around and found that he had been entirely abandoned for an apparently fascinating conversation with the Lasombra and that Brujah Nicholas.

Anatole tsked, a noise of dismay. Had Beckett said something wrong? Anatole frowned, and the skin between his eyes crinkled before relaxing again. “You’re not…?” Without warning, Anatole grabbed Beckett’s hand, and his long fingers pressed into the pulse point. Alarm roused his Beast, but in the next moment the huffing anxiousness turned to a purr. Anatole cradled his hand, nuzzled the palm, pressed Beckett's fingers against his temple. He looked indescribably sorrowful. “You can’t hear me, can you?”

Beckett was nonplussed. “I beg your pardon?”

Anatole shook his head. “You’re not a childe of Malkav, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Neither brother or father or cousin. God placed us in separate skins.”

“I’m not your brother, no,” Beckett said, and he could not find it within himself to be sorry. His thoughts on Anatole so far tended _not_ in a family fashion. “But we are both Autarkis and Mnemosyne. We can trade information pleasantly enough by voice. It’s a very popular form, I understand. I’m very interested in why you dress like a Catholic monk, for example.”

Beckett smirked. This was going to be an interesting friendship indeed.


	2. Logos

“You have a question in your face,” Anatole said, without appearing to look at him.

“My head is rarely without a question, these days,” Beckett replied. He turned a page in his journal. It was an absent motion that held no import: a blank page would hardly have answers.

Anatole did not make an exasperated sigh, like Aristotle would have. The Malkavian had proven to have a rare patience with Beckett’s attempts to pluck the mystery of him. They were in the de Laurent library with its endless shelves of half-forgotten lore, and Beckett couldn’t focus long enough on any word. He could only sit at his desk, fiddle with his quill, and alternate between staring at his blank journal page and Anatole’s long, lithe body’s attempt to fit in the loveseat opposite.

“Come sit with me.”

Beckett did not remember giving himself permission to move, but his body stood, straightened his waistcoat, and walked over to the loveseat. The sofa was one of those stuffed ones with dark wood edges. He put his hands on his hips. Where was he to sit exactly, with Anatole spilling over the whole thing?

This time Anatole did sigh. He sat up and scooted over. Beckett sat on the free cushion and all was well for one second before his arms were suddenly full of the other scholar. Anatole wiggled and moved until he sat full on Beckett’s lap with an arm on the seat’s hardwood back behind them. Beckett had no idea what contortions Anatole performed to make it happen, but his face fit right in the hollow of Beckett’s neck and shoulder.

“Comfortable?” Beckett asked.

“That is not the question the little wolf wants to ask,” Anatole said, nuzzling into the fluff of Beckett’s cravat.

Beckett sniffed to try to hide how content his Beast was like this, how it was hardly a whisper. “I want to ask about your visions again. How do you know they’re from God and not some other Malkavian Elder?”

Anatole shrugged. “Jeanne d’Arc knew. So do I.”

Beckett arched a brow. “Did you know her?”

Silence reigned a beat. When Anatole spoke, his voice sound faint and far away. “The other Kindred saw her as a fearful curiosity, so they desired an emissary. I came to her in the night, as Ruth did to Boaz. I pleaded mercy. I asked her to share her bounty, to not let it wither and burn in the field of heretics. She called me brother-child and bade me harm no one and come tomorrow.”

“And did you? Visit her?”

“Yes, but again she refused me. I knew from the start it was futile, that martyr’s blood bled the color of morning sun. I gave her poison to change it a dreamy, painless green. She was too young, Beckett, to have her eyeballs melt out her skull.” Anatole hissed. “Her guards deserved a worse death than I could grant them.”

Beckett mulled this story over. An Elder Kindred was a historian’s delight. They had lived through the very history Beckett had read about in university. The implications were vast. Obviously Anatole was not a present for every politically important event, but the Court of Love still reeled from the Camisard’s violence in the south and debated if the Camarilla there needed reinforcing.

Beckett pushed his new historical questions aside. He still had follow up ones from his first query: “Clarify for me: God not only speaks to you, but He also tells you about the machinations of the Elders and how they’re steering us towards our doom.”

“Gehenna,” Anatole corrected. “There is always a beginning. There is always an end. It has always been so.”

“Right. But how do you _know_? That it’s God and you’re interpreting it right. There’s no empirical proof.”

Anatole’s body warmed, and Beckett did not know what to do with his hands. One had been placed against Anatole’s narrow back and the other on his knobby knees. The warmth felt like a warning, like embers gaining flame. He stiffened and moved his fingers away.

“No, I—” Anatole cut himself off and started again. “More human. Comfort.”

Beckett could not see Anatole’s face, but his arms and bare feet had indeed lost their pallor. While alive, Anatole most likely had been quite fair-skinned, like in those portraits of royalty. With the Blush, he regained a pink-porcelain tinge and the serpentine blue veins in his hand faded. And he was _warm_.

Beckett hadn’t realized how cold he’d been. Downright freezing. He held Anatole tighter. Like a heated brick fresh from the fire, Anatole ebbed a hot thermal wave to Beckett’s bones. A pleasant tingling sensation permeated from his palms to his elbows to his shoulders, making everything relax and untangle. Some small noise—of relief, of homecoming—escaped him.

Anatole undid the black ribbon in Beckett’s hair, so the strands fell loose. His thumb pressed and rubbed into the nape of Beckett’s neck. Embarrassment did not prevent a groan.

Anatole said, “I do not have all the answers or explanations, little wolf. But as the Lord attempted to explain the ineffable kingdom of Heaven in parable and approximations, so I will do my best.”

“Can Kindred love?”

God damn him. Why did that matter; why did he blurt that out; Anatole was going to think he was a fool crowned idiot. Beckett closed his eyes and made himself breathe. If he took the question back, he would look even more the schoolboy, so he let those cursed words hang in the air. Huh. Anatole smelled like honey.

Like some sort of one-handed Mesmer, Anatole unpinned and unwound Beckett’s cravat, let the cloth drop on the floor, and Beckett could do nothing to prevent it. Anatole pressed his warm face directly against Beckett’s neck. Goosebumps peppered up and down his skin, like oh so many small uncanny kisses. Anatole’s lips felt full and chapped. Before Beckett could process anything more, Anatole pulled away and a fuller version of his voice answered, “All God’s creatures have an instinct to love God and their neighbor as themselves. With Kindred and kine it is not a question of can they. It is a question of will they. As the time flows, despair and circumstance make us cut off part of ourselves to survive. But which part—what pound of flesh is important, which organ crafts a sustainable reality—that is up to the individual.

“We are dead, but our base material is that of a human. No alchemy can erase that origin of emotion, that craving for affection and urge to spill forth love.”

“How poetic,” Beckett said, finding his footing in the presence of a lecture. “So you and Lucita are not solely convenient traveling companions.”

“Lucita?” Anatole raised his head, and Beckett wanted to memorize those flushed cheeks, that quizzical turn of the mouth, the glitter in the blue depths of the eye. “Lucita is my friend.”

“But you’re not actually a monk. You never took a vow of celibacy.”

“No,” Anatole said, tilting his head. Frustration narrowed his eyes. “But I have never liked—whatever it is in English— _pas de deux_ or _la_ _petit mort_.”

“I see.” Beckett couldn’t handle Anatole looking at him anymore. He couldn’t handle this heat, this burning, this all too real body on his. His Beast could not be quieter, but he had the urge to run.

“I like kissing though,” Anatole said. As if to demonstrate, he kissed Beckett’s cheek, and Beckett thought that if his heart hadn’t already, it would have stopped. Anatole wrapped both arms around Beckett’s neck. “And this. Holding those dear to me.”

Beckett only wanted to ask a question and it had come to this, this—this _entanglement_. He could say nothing, do nothing, but press his broad palm against the woolen robe to better feel the solid lines of Anatole’s spine.

“Love is a good way to holdfast one’s Humanity,” Anatole remarked, seemingly oblivious to the state Beckett was in. “Keeps the Beast at bay.”

“Good to know,” Beckett said. He had to escape.

“Are you aware you smell like cinnamon? I thought it was the holy oil of anointing but this close, I have found the right of it.” Anatole took a deep breath, and his face transformed into a fond, radiantly human smile.

“What the devil is cinnamon?” All these answers only led to new questions. Half of him wanted to reach the bottom of all mysteries. The other half wanted to flee. “I find myself rather hungry. I think I shall go out.”

Anatole chuckled. “Aren’t nighttime walks how you found yourself here in the first place? Let us go to together, to visit the moon.”


	3. Pathos

At least blood and ash nurtured roses. That discordant thought was all Beckett could have as his wolf teeth bit and locked onto the Hunter’s arm.

The Hunter screamed bloody murder, and an elbow dove into Beckett’s skull. Pain burst like cannon fire behind his eyes. His teeth dug deeper and yanked, making the bones pop out of sockets, but not full disengage. He needed to protect the Malkavians—fragile Anatole; intellectual Aristotle. The Malkavians weren’t built for team brawls, unlike Lucita and he. Lasombra had malleable shadows and sharp blades, and Gangrel had wicked canines.

Beckett forced blood into his jaw and, with an almighty, shrieking wrench of sheared muscle and bone, pulled the arm free of its owner. The Hunter screamed and fell with a thud. Darkness shifted and changed around him like soap in water. The Hunter’s voice muffled, gurgled, and died.

A group of seventy Hunters had sprung upon the Kindred of Versailles, and people wondered why Beckett disliked attending Court. Power flowed to his vision to sense the Unseen—Anatole and Aristotle still invisibly crouched with their backs to a wall of the hedge maze, a contorted nest of oil-slick shadow around them. Safe for now. A gore-spattered Lucita twisted and danced with two Hunters. He would join her fray—

An all too familiar voice shattered the air. Beckett whipped around to spot a gruesome, ugly stake stick out of the now-visible Anatole’s chest. Blood gushed from wound as Anatole’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, the whites glaring their wrongness. Aristotle didn’t have time to react before a stake found his heart. His sire, his colleague, his friends—they fell to the earth in slack-jawed paralysis.

The Beast’s roar drowned out everything.

Beckett lost. His ears pounded with false heartbeat; his limbs electrified with adrenaline and movement. He did not know what he heard or where he went—only the copper taste in his mouth and the whistling of wind in his fur. A flash of alien, alchemical goggles covering half a human face. It was peaceful, to give up. To know nothing more than a common animal. To have claws sharper and longer than anything or anyone who would stand in his way. There was a clarity, a purity, an addictive simplicity. Kill or be killed, and he was the one doing the killing.

“Beckett, Beckett,” called Anatole. “Sweetheart, return to us—!”

Reality snagged and narrowed and warped to the feeling of Anatole’s hands cradling his human head. Bright, blue, and worried eyes darted all over his face, and Beckett vaguely noted that his glasses were cracked. But he was no longer in frenzy, so vagaries were not enough. His brain launched into overdrive. Anatole was up and awake and visible. The sword ring of battle had been replaced by groans of the wounded. It was over.

Forcing his tongue into human language took a moment. “Lucita and Aristotle?” Beckett croaked.

The tension in the lines of Anatole’s face relaxed. “Safe. The Lord worked through you to protect us from the murderers. Feel.”

Anatole let go of Beckett’s face to guide a hand into pressing against his chest, right over where the stake had been. Beckett spread his fingers wide. The cost of tonight’s frenzy was fine, cat-like claws, black as midnight. It was a price worth paying.

Relief flooded his senses. Perhaps it was that relief, or a hangover from the Beast or some well of feeling that he had hidden even from himself, but, whatever the impulse’s origin, it overcame any scruples to kiss Anatole.

Anatole made a noise of surprise. Thinking he was unwanted, Beckett made to pull back. He corrected this notion when Anatole grabbed the lapels of his coat, tugged him close, and sealed their lips together again. The Beast was very interested in these proceedings, in the blood honey taste of Anatole’s mouth, in the intoxication of his tongue. Arms circled Anatole’s waist through the woolen robe. “You are owed all the sweetness that can be distilled from my heart,” Anatole whispered, his breath burning warm against Beckett’s face.

“I…” Beckett was at a loss for words. His eyes shut and his body shuddered. Anatole gathered him up and nuzzled against his neck. Beckett gasped as he felt fangs pressed against his bare skin. He was shivering and still all at once.

The fangs disappeared, and Beckett didn’t know if the pang in his chest was of relief or loss. Dizziness swirled his mind. For all he had learned about Kindred culture over the years, he knew not how to proceed. He wrapped his arms around Anatole all the tighter.

Anatole returned the embrace with enthusiasm, even starting to pet Beckett’s head. His voice was quiet, soothing. “I have waited so long for you,” he said. “Though I did not know it. I sensed you in the garden and I recognized your soul. You do not ever have to be lonely, little wolf, for we have found one another at last.”

Beckett pulled back to give Anatole a skeptical look. “You have loved me since you met me?”

Anatole laughed. “I am Malkavian. I am forever waiting for people to catch up.”

“Well, don’t anymore,” Beckett said, and he kissed Anatole for the joy of it. “I am here.”


End file.
